HAL WAS triumphant, of course. He had ‘opened up’, overcoming his reticence, as he started telling Vikki all about himself.
“It was my fault really—the screw-up, me and Moira, I mean. Moira’s my ex-wife. That other girl—she couldn’t have been much over eighteen. One of my students in the SSSA corps training school: she must have been almost the youngest there. She was so damned pretty! And she just went for me: I couldn’t resist it. I just couldn’t control things…”
“You were at the training school then, Hal, my love?”
“Yes. I was a lecturer there: training in asteroidal mining procedures. Of course I shouldn’t have had anything to do with the trainees. But it would have been all right: I could have got away with it, if that girl hadn’t boasted of her ‘conquest’ to her room-mates—and word got out. The Principal got to hear—and I got sacked. And of course Moira was bound to find out. The rest—well, Vikki, darling, you don’t really want to hear all the sordid details now, do you?”
“That’s all right, Hal. You’re right, you don’t need to tell me. But you’ve still got your job here. That’s something to be proud of.”
“Yes. I was finished as a lecturer, but SSSA felt I was still of use to them as a drilling engineer, working out in Space. And I’m here.”
“And then you met me. And I’m so glad you did. And I’m pleased that it was I who hit on you this time, not some eighteen-year-old student. I’m nowhere near eighteen anymore!” Vikki pulled him down on her, wrapped her arms and legs round him, and gave him a brief kiss. Hal gave out a contented sigh.
“I guess I was always too shy about women,” he admitted. “It was like that with Moira, all those years ago. She picked on me, not the other way around. I’d never had a girl before her.”
Vikki felt honoured to be the recipient of Hal’s openness, but felt his reluctance to say more. Best to change the subject. “Tell me about your sons instead,” she urged.
“Sean’s the older. Seventeen now—and he’s aiming to get into Raith Rovers juniors team—that’s a football club near me—soccer, I mean. Near where I used to live, before Moira kicked me out. Sean’s been to one or two trials with the club, and he’s quite hopeful he’ll get in. We do exchange e-mails now and again: Moira doesn’t mind that. The younger one, Anthony, he’s thirteen and still at school. Also keen on football, but he also wants to follow me into Space. I’m not sure I like that idea. Still, he’s a young lad: he might change his ambitions as he gets older…”
“Well, Hal, I just hope you do get to see them once you’re back on Earth. Your ex can’t hold out against you for ever. And surely, once Sean turns eighteen, he’ll be his own master: he’ll be able to choose freely whom he wants to visit. His mother won’t be able to restrict him. And anyway, once she learns that you’re in a steady relationship—”
“Are we in a steady relationship?”
“Don’t be silly, Hal. Of course we are. I wasn’t sure about you at first—but I am now. And I’ve had difficult times, myself. Not as bad as yours,” Vikki added, reassuringly. “I split with my boyfriend about a year ago. It was an amicable separation: he just didn’t feel comfortable dating a cosmonaut like me. But I missed him at first. I haven’t slept with anyone since then—until you. And I want you.”
“Are we in love, then?”
Hal’s questioning was off-putting, but she had to answer. “I’m not quite sure about that yet: too early—but I think so. Alright: I fancied Paul for a while—but he’s not in the least interested, and I’ve gone off him. It’s you now, Hal, no mistake. Only you. And I’m sure you want me, too—and that’s important to me.”
“Y-yes. Honestly, Vikki, I didn’t know how to approach you. But—that time you kissed me! Yes—even if the reason was to make me lie to Alex. Of course I forgive you for that—now!”
“Poor Hal, my darling. Well, no need to be shy any more…”
---§§§---
There was excitement at the base. Vikki had urged Hal to get back to his drilling—and it was only a matter of a day or two before he announced that he had struck gold. Well, all right, not exactly ‘gold’: he’d struck liquid water, but it might as well have been gold—and they might equally have been a gang of Californian forty-niners—for the excitement the turn of events aroused.
Murielle set to work at once. They needed to draw many samples, and she needed plenty of time with the electron microscope, but finally she called the crew together.
“We ’ave life! There is life in ze water!” Vikki noted that Murielle, when she had to communicate important matters with the entire crew, made an effort to speak in her less-than-perfect English. Just as well! “What I ’ave found is micro-organisms” continued Murielle. “I would au mieux describe zem as Archaea, similar to the Archaea we ’ave back on Earth. Similar but not quite ze same. Or maybe zey are Bacteria. But I think zey are Archaea.”
“ ‘Archaea’?” queried Alex, whose aptitude in biology was fairly elementary. “Bacteria I’ve heard of, but…”
Dr Ye chose to intervene and clarify, so as to spare Murielle further effort. “One of the three domains of Earthly life: Archaea, Bacteria, and Eukaryotes,” he explained, simply.
“Archaea—Eukaryotes—now you’re being really obscure, Dr Ye. What the hell are Eukaryotes?” demanded Alex.
“You’re one—and so am I. And so was that tomato I ate earlier today. All the familiar ‘higher’ living organisms: animals, plants, fungi, algae, many single-celled creatures, they’re all Eukaryotes. Organisms whose cells contain a nucleus. Bacteria, and all other organisms which lack a cell nucleus, were once put into the domain ‘Prokaryotes’ but that’s been deprecated now; there are two domains called Archaea and Bacteria proper. But Murielle says she doesn’t know for certain which of them we have in the sample.”
“So this is the proof: we have life on Enceladus! But Earth-like life having evolved here?” asked Alex, in some amazement. “Nearly one-and-a-half billion kilometres from Earth and with no physical contact, not ever? Surely that’s impossible! How can we be sure they evolved here—or were they perhaps dropped by Lassell, Cassini, or the Voyagers? Accidental contamination?” She was referring to the twentieth and early twenty-first century flybys—which were not supposed to make any physical contact with Saturn nor with any of its satellites—apart from Titan. But mistakes could have been made…
“Highly doubtful,” put in Joachim, contributing to the discussion for the first time. “None of those spacecraft ventured anywhere near going below escape velocity with respect to Enceladus. Anything dropped would have drifted away from here, not towards here.”
“But Cassini went below Saturn’s escape velocity, didn’t it,” said Alex. “And so did that more recent probe—Lassell. Stuff could have been dropped into orbit around Saturn, and then later on crashed into Enceladus.”
“Any matter that did that would lie on the surface, wouldn’t it?” continued Joachim. “Not below thirty kilometres of ice. And you didn’t find any life forms on the surface, did you, Murielle?”
“Vous avez raison, Joachim, I ’ave so far found no life on ze surface. But we must not entirely discount ze possibility that these are Earthly organisms accidentally introduced to this world. I must study them in more detail.”
“Do we message Earth about this?” asked Paul.
“Not yet. I must complete my detailed technical report, and then I put it for peer review ’ere—before we tell Earth. I vill write in both French and English.”
“That is quite right, Murielle,” added Alex. “Dr Ye, and Dr Vikki, you two will independently, and separate from each other, carry out peer reviews of Murielle’s document once it is ready. OK with that?”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Vikki suppressed a groan, but she nodded. It was certainly the right approach. And both Dr Ye and she would be able to correct Murielle’s imperfect English!
“So,” remarked Alex, in conclusion, “we have discovered the first extraterrestrial life-forms anywhere in the Universe. The first! We are going to be famous. Feted all around the Solar System!”
“Not the first,” murmured Vikki under her breath, with a quick glance at Gustave.
Not quietly enough.
“Did you say something, Vikki?” asked Alex.
Vikki looked imploringly at Gustave. He nodded.
“Come on, Vikki. If there’s something you want to say, out with it!” said Alex.
“All right. There is another life-form here on Enceladus. Gustave and I have seen it. But it is not native to Enceladus—not even native to the Solar System. It has come from another star-system.”
“You’re talking about your precious snowdrift. Your ‘hummock’, aren’t you?” remarked Alex.
“Yes. You’ll all find this hard to believe. At first I deduced that it must be some kind of alien spaceship—but then it revealed to me—yes! it can ‘speak’ English; it has learnt our language—that it is an entire living organism: a sort of interstellar ‘whale’. Something that can live in vacuum and travel through space unaided.”
“Oh come off it, Vikki!” exclaimed Alex. “You’re just obsessed with that stupid fucking snowdrift of yours. Now you make out that it’s an ET of some sort! What crazy notion is going to enter your silly head next? I’ve half a mind to send you to sick-bay—permanently.”
“May I put in a word, Alex?” Gustave intervened, calmly. “I too have seen what Vikki says she saw—and I can confirm her account. Do you want to hear me out? Or are you going to ‘section’ me as well?”
Alex had no answer to that. “All right, Vikki, continue,” she muttered weakly.
“And to communicate with us,” resumed Vikki, who seemed undisturbed by Alex’s outburst: “Gustave and me, that is: here’s how. It opens up a sort of aperture in its side, and lets us enter a sort of room-shaped cavity inside its body. Then it talks to us by displaying text on one of the walls of this ‘room’, and we can reply using a sort of keyboard. At first it ‘talked’ in binary, which was very awkward, but I ‘taught’ it how to write proper English.”
“Aha!” put in Paul. “The encyclopedia. That’s why you wanted it, why you transmitted it towards Ceres for no meaningful purpose.”
“Yes. I was hoping that the alien would be eavesdropping on our signals. And it seems that I was right, because it’s learned how to write our language—and a lot more about us. Too much—perhaps—but it’s too late to go back now. At least that shows that it’s hyper-intelligent.”
“But this is incredible,” put in Dr Ye. “Alien, yes—ET intelligence, yes—but has it not occurred to you that it might be some kind of AI-driven device? A robot?”
“It could be that I suppose—but I’ve a hunch that it really is a living creature.”
“I must take a look at this—creature,” remarked Murielle. “I vill do so, when I ’ave finished my paper on my Archaea. What do we call this monster? We must give it a name.”
“Good thinking,” said Dr Ye. “Have you named your ‘Archaea’ specimens?”
“Yes. In my paper, I give them names. I think I ’ave two distinct species, and I ’ave given them ze Latin names Enceladium danterrii and Enceladium mcmanusii. Provisionally, of course.” Hal blushed at hearing his name immortalised in this way.
“That’s quite a pair of mouthfuls you’ve given us there, Murielle—but we’ll have to get used to them,” said Dr Ye. “Meanwhile, what about this—monster—as you call it? Vikki’s and Gustave’s discovery? Vikki just now referred to it as a sort of ‘interstellar whale’ and that seems apt: look at the size of the thing! Why not name it after the (alas! extinct) Blue Whale. What’s the Latin for a Blue Whale?”
“Balaenoptera musculus,” put in Murielle, helpfully. “Bien—very well, we name it Balaenoidus enceladi. Comme une baleine—like a whale, but not quite like a whale, and of Enceladus. D’accord?”
“Not actually of Enceladus, according to Vikki’s theory—but OK for now,” Alex agreed. “Nevertheless, we perhaps ought to defer bestowing a scientific name until we’ve ascertained whether it really is a living creature. But we could give it a common name for now. How about ‘Bala’ for short. Everyone agree?”
There was murmured assent. So ‘Bala’ the mysterious creature became.
---§§§---
It would take some time for Murielle to complete her technical report, so Vikki and Gustave had time to visit the ‘Bala’ once again. Others, Hal and Dr Ye especially, wanted to come along too, but Vikki explained that the Bala was rather shy of receiving visitors, so Alex ordered that it should be just Vikki and Gustave once again.
This time they were admitted to the Bala’s interior without ceremony. The message on the wall read:
◄ I have been waiting for some time for your next visit. You are both welcome.
It was Gustave who did most of the questioning this time.
► You told us, you do not use spaceships, instead you travel through space by means of some kind of implant. Can you elaborate?
◄ I am not permitted to describe in detail our technology to a less advanced species. But I can reveal that the implant generates thrust by means of a beam of neutrinos.
“That sounds plausible—although way beyond human technology,” remarked Gustave to Vikki in an aside. “Do you follow all this?”
“I know what neutrinos are. They’re those little particles that can pass straight through you without doing any harm.”
“Correct. Zillions of them pass through Earth—and through your body—every second—and almost nothing can stop them. They zip along at lightspeed and can in theory produce thrust opposed to their momentum: Newton’s Third Law and all that. How these beings manage to harness it is beyond me. But I must ask some more questions.” He resumed typing:
► All right then. This implant: can it enable you to travel at near lightspeed, relative to your home system?
◄ Nowhere near lightspeed. The best the implant can achieve is about 0.1c: one tenth of lightspeed.
► But that means that the voyage from your home world must take some six hundred of our years.
◄ We can tolerate that. Our lifespan is far longer than that of your species.
► So you have been travelling towards the Solar System for the past six hundred years?
◄ More than that, because my companions and I stopped at other systems on the way.
“This is incredible,” whispered Gustave to Vikki. “We must get hold of their technology somehow, whatever the cost. Although if their interstellar drive only generates 0.1c, it won’t be so much use for human interstellar travel. Forty-three years just to get to Alpha Centauri would be a bit tedious! Still, a helluva lot quicker than the Voyagers.” He began typing again:
► You say you have companions of your kind. Where are they? Are they on this world?
◄ One of them is on the moon you call Nereid, and another on the minor planet you call Chiron. Neither of those worlds turned out to be suitable for our extended stay, so they may move to this world in due course. The rest of the group, including our Leader, are drifting in space at present.
► Have any ventured further into the Solar System?
◄ Not nearer your sun than the orbit of Jupiter. We cannot tolerate high temperatures and excessive radiation from your sun. Nor the high gravity on your larger worlds.
“That means, Earth is probably safe from an invasion by Balas,” remarked Gustave to Vikki in another stage whisper. “No War of the Worlds stuff, if you were hoping for that!”
Vikki scoffed. “It’s a long time since I last read any H. G. Wells. And I know what Nereid is: it’s a moon of Neptune. But where is Chiron?” she asked.
“It’s not a moon: it’s what astronomers call a Centaur: a comet-like minor planet orbiting the sun between Saturn and Uranus. Not a very hospitable place for humans, whatever the Bala makes of it.”
“OK, thanks. Now I’d like to put a question, please,” replied Vikki. So Gustave relinquished the keyboard, and she typed:
► I would like to bring another of my species to visit you. A female this time. Is that all right?
◄ Very well. But only the two of you: this male must remain behind. And bear in mind that I must perform the inspection of any newcomer.
“So next time, it’ll be Murielle,” remarked Gustave as he and Vikki trekked back to the base. “I hope she’ll be received as warmly as we were.” Vikki could see him grinning through his helmet visor. There was a hint of irony in his voice.